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We think a journalism program in the publishing capital of the world should itself be a publisher. Welcome, then, to the Department's Publishing Zone.
This is the place where we do it ourselves, commit our own journalism.
Schools of drama have their own theatres where plays are produced. Studio art programs have galleries where art is exhibited. Law schools have legal clinics. Medical schools have entire hospitals in which to train doctors.
What do journalism schools have? Our answer is to have lots of media, different public venues where the Department does its own journalism, and acts as a public-interest publisher. We want to own and operate these venues (some of which will be modest in scale, or appear irregularly) for several reasons.
First, it's great way to teach. We call it teach by doing. You get a powerful lesson in journalism by trying it for real, and then trying something else if it doesn't work. But it isn't real unless you have readers, listeners, viewers, users interacting with you. We stress that.
Second, in order to be a publisher, you have to solve the number one problem for any public interest medium, which is not to become profitable but sustainable. How to keep the lights on, maintain the enterprise so that it develops? One answer is to raise money so we can publish more things in more media for more people, and we are always doing that. Another is to cooperate with existing publishers and news providers, giving them content they can use because it's good journalism. We do that, and will be doing more in future semesters. A third is to run your own low cost experiments and see what happens. We also do that.
Finally, there are just fewer places in a commercialized media universe where quality journalism on serious subjects can be found. Public interest publishing is part of a university's duty to democracy and public culture. This is our zone for that.
Faculty publish here, and we announce their work when others publish or screen it. Students, too. The Department is sometimes the publisher of record. This Zone is going to be changing and growing a lot over the next several years. So look across the screen and find out what's new in our publishing ventures. And watch this space for more.
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"John Malkovich's 'Seduction and Despair' Project"
CRC alumnus David Ng talks with the actor/director about his new stage work, based on the life of serial killer Jack Unterweger. Los Angeles Times, May 2, 2008.
The choreography of murder is a messy business. For Malkovich, it's an artistically challenging one as well. The actor is playing real-life Austrian serial killer and bestselling author Jack Unterweger in a world premiere production, "Seduction and Despair," scheduled to run this weekend at Barnum Hall Theatre in Santa Monica.
Malkovich is no one's idea of a conventional movie star, so it should come as little surprise that when working on stage he gravitates toward projects that are eccentric and potentially disturbing. "Seduction and Despair" is an unabashedly experimental work that combines elements of theater, opera and digital video art into what its creators hope will be a new artistic form.
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"Reclaiming the Shrew"
CRC Professor Katie Roiphe reviews Germaine Greer's Shakespeare's Wife. The New York Times Book Review, April 27, 2008.
The prevailing image of Ann Hathaway is that of an illiterate seductress who beguiled the young Shakespeare, conceived a child and ensnared him in a loveless union. Germaine Greer's task in her ingenious new book, "Shakespeare’s Wife," is to expose the construction of this fantasy, tracing its evolution from early biographers like Thomas de Quincey through the work of respected modern scholars like Stephen Greenblatt. "The Shakespeare wallahs," she writes, "have succeeded in creating a Bard in their own likeness, that is to say, incapable of relating to women."
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Song Yet Sung
Professor James McBride's's book, Song Yet Sung
looks to both the past and the future not only of the black community, but of America itself, as his story poses questions about the true meaning of freedom, redemption, and justice. His is a morally complicated world, in which people may be seen as black or white, but right choices often are not. Yet it is also a world in which the infinite human capacity for love transcends all else, including issues of race, identity, and conflict. Song Yet Sung will resonate powerfully for his legions of devoted fans and draw thousands of new readers of transfixing, touching, eloquently written fiction of consequence.
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"The Rap on Whites Who Try to Act Black"
It was a tale of sex, violence and a young girl crossing the color line. It was raw, gripping, sad and triumphant, tracing the heroine's successful escape from an environment of abandonment, abuse, poverty and gangs. It was supposed to be true.
Not a word of it was.
Alumna Stacey Patton in The Washington Post on the Margaret Seltzer memoir hoax
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